8 a.m., Sunday morning, and the big Christmas program at Trinity Church International in Lake Worth, FL is about to get underway. Loads of planning, months of rehearsals, hiring a string and horn section (small orchestra) went into this. plus stage setup, chairs, mics, and programmed lights. It's gonna be a great show.
I'm changing batteries in the eight praise singers' RF mics, turning on the synths onstage and checking the wired, large diaphragm condenser mics for the five-piece string ensemble and the four-piece horn section. The 80-person choir is showing up in clusters, and the nine musicians are tuning up and doodling on their instruments. One hundred and seven people will be producing sound from this stage this morning – 110, if you include the pastors.
I finish my logistical sound duties on the stage & head back to my li'l FOH box. (Ahhh, serenity!) I pull down the master fader and fire up the Enterprise. The Praise & Worship leader signals to turn on his mic. I look at his channel; it's on. His wedge Aux is up, master Aux is up, he should be coming through the center wedges loud and clear… but… he's not! OMG!!! I push up the main fader, NADA!! OMG!!!
The FOH board was all set from rehearsals the night before – or so I thought. The other singers grabbed their RF mics. NADA! OMG!!! I went onstage to check the RF rack, sometimes someone hits the on/off switch and no RF mic signal; rack was on! Hmmmmm…
8:20; Doors @ 9…I headed back to the board (my li'l FOH box was not so serene now), pondering as I walked. The P&W leader was freakin'! He has a short fuse for anything that goes wrong; it totally blows his groove. "Do you know what it is?" he asks. I didn't answer; I was consumed with the task at hand. I started checking all the assign buttons, comps, gains and everything else I could think of. As I ran through each channel, I noticed the ACP88 comp settings for the pastor's mic were changed. Many of the drum channel eq's were changed. Faders were pushed up and down; comp settings on the Praise Singers mics were all changed…
Holy Bejesus, Batman! What could've happened overnight? Power surge? Lightning spike? Tornado? Hurricane? Act of God? Conspiracy? What???!!!
8:40; Doors @ 9… The P&W leader is losin' it, everybody's crowded around my li'l used-to-be serene FOH box, and I'm feverishly trying to come up with solutions. Okay, no signal on the RF mics, board's all jacked up, ACP88's are jacked up… I'm gonna solve this f-in riddle and get on with the show!
8:45; Doors @ 9… I yank the Yamaha M2500 56 input frame back far enough from the wall to get behind it and start pulling inserts out of the RF mic channels. I forgot to pull the channels down in my feverish attempt to get a signal (Yeah, worse than a junkie lookin' for a fix!) It is contrary to all I've learned in my audio career, but the sweetest sound came to my ears – FEEDBACK! Ahhhh yes, I was onto something. It appears that there WAS a conspiracy, AND the ACP88 on the P&W RF mics took a dump!
8:50; Doors @ 9…The entire Sanctuary is packed! More than 2,000 people anxiously awaited the Trinity Christmas Presentation. They heard it was going to be grand! Little did they know…
I quickly slid the board back in place, reset the gains on the RF mics (now with no compression), reset all the comp settings on the one ACP88 that was still working (Pastor's earset and handheld) along with the drum channel settings and the rest of the faders, quickly changed the batteries in the Pastor's handheld RF mic and ran it to the stage. I ran back to my li'l FOH box as the house lights were dimming.
9 a.m. – SHOWTIME! Aside from minor adjustments on the wedges and other stuff on the fly, during showtime, all went well. The horns were slamming! The band was pumping! The choir was big and wide! Who says church people can't rock?
After reviewing the security tapes and me laughing out loud, we discovered we were foiled by a four-year-old, curious sound-man-to-be. He eased his way into the door of the FOH booth and tuned everything to his ear! Of course, in his imaginative state, he heard everything precisely the way he set all the comps, channel EQ and fader settings, even though there was not a peep coming out of the system. From that point on, the door is locked from inquisitive tykes. There's no doubt our li'l guy will be some sort of techie.
-Submitted by Del Mize, Audio Systems Director, Trinity Church International
